


Briar Rose

by haillenarte



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Bisexuality, Consent Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 04:17:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15283446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haillenarte/pseuds/haillenarte
Summary: Written in four hours; set during patch 3.3. Alphinaud, Estinien, and the way that boys become men.





	1. Chapter 1

There are a thousand other things that he should think about — peace treaties, the Holy See, the aristocracy, the Eorzean Alliance — but the first thing that occurs to Alphinaud as he walks into the Temple Knights infirmary is that it wasn't  _fair_ that Aymeric was the one to carry Estinien into Ishgard. It's an absurd thought, of course. Wholly illogical. Of all the men in the whole of Coerthas, Aymeric is the closest to Estinien, and probably the most qualified to welcome the Azure Dragoon home. From an objective standpoint, it would be irrational to resent Ser Aymeric for anything.  
  
But somehow, it wasn't  _fair_. Not Aymeric, when he had been the first to give Estinien up as gone for good. Not Aymeric, when Alphinaud had been the one who believed most strongly that the dragoon could be saved. That the last, lost son of Ferndale would not be lost forever.  
  
But Alphinaud would not have had the strength to lift Estinien to begin with, and besides, Estinien is not a prize to be won. It was never a matter of who deserved to do it, because deep down, Alphinaud believes that few people deserve anything save death.  
  
And yet — so chafed, to feel so small.  
  
For most of his life, Alphinaud's appearance has been a boon, not a burden. His youthful looks can be a detriment every now and then, true, but it is easier to be underestimated by one's allies than overestimated by one's foes. Being slight and slender has never bothered him — Papalymo would bristle at the thought of anyone judging a mage by his height — and even being mistaken for a girl from time to time is tolerable enough, so long as it means he can pass as Alisaie on the rare occasion that such passing is necessary.  
  
And yet, as he sits looking at Estinien's lifeless body in the bed beside him, never before has Alphinaud felt so keenly that he doesn't have the body that he needs.  
  
For most of the evening, the Temple Knight chirurgeons flit in and out of the room, monitoring Estinien's vitals, his flickering aether. They prescribe an increasing number of herbal remedies: Mother's Mercy, Thaliak's thumb, heirloom dandelion. Privately, Alphinaud curses the rejection of alchemical knowledge among Ishgardian hospitaliers. Potions, properly distilled, would be far more efficacious than poultices and prayer, but Alphinaud's own knowledge of the craft only goes so far.  
  
Of the nearly endless parade of healers working bell after bell to keep the Azure Dragoon alive, only Captain Abel Whitecape has time to spare for the boy at Estinien's bedside. "Master Alphinaud," the man says quietly, as he looks over Estinien's prescription chart for the fourth time in six bells, "I understand your feelings full well, and so I will not ask you to leave. But perhaps you too are in need of bed rest? The hour is late, and even Ishgard's finest knights do not stand vigil all the night long."  
  
"I am fine, Captain Whitecape," Alphinaud lies. "Pray do not concern yourself with me and mine."  
  
He does not turn his head to watch Captain Whitecape exit the room, and he waits for the man's footsteps to fade away before he releases the breath he didn't realize he was holding.  
  
In Ishgard, no one calls him  _Master Leveilleur,_  and Alphinaud keeps thinking that perhaps this is the real reason he has always wanted to see the holy city. Ishgard has been isolated from Eorzea for many long years; it has few real ties to Sharlayan. Louisoix Leveilleur means nothing to most Ishgardians — and it isn't that Alphinaud wants people to forget his grandfather, but sometimes, there is more to his life than Louisoix's legacy.  
  
Ishgardians do not define Alphinaud by the deeds of his grandfather, and Estinien never asked him for a miracle — but Alphinaud tried, all the same.  
  
At heart, Alphinaud is an idealist, which means that he is both more and less like his sister than others would like to believe. He knows her very well, as she knows him. If the fabric of the world fell into Alisaie's hands, she would create a society in which cruelty would not thrive — where no one would be a pirate, and governments would be unnecessary. Alphinaud is more pragmatic. He knows that pirates and politicians will grow fat off the corpses of good men no matter what the Scions do. He simply works to create a world where their acts have as little impact as possible.  
  
Most of the time, Alphinaud believes in compromise. It's just — just  _once_ , this once, he wanted things to end  _happily_.  
  
So Alphinaud sits, and watches Estinien take shallow breaths against a backdrop of white sheets, and he doesn't dare sleep because he can't be certain that a happy ending is in sight.  
  
If the faerie tales are to be believed — though Alphinaud has no heart for faerie tales, never liked them the way Alisaie did — sleeping princes wake with true love's kiss. And Alphinaud doesn't think he's Estinien's true love, or that Estinien is any kind of prince — he's not stupid or conceited enough to believe either of those things — but all the same, a wild fancy takes his heart.   
  
Delusional for one fleeting moment, Alphinaud leans in, and presses a kiss to Estinien's lips.   
  
He isn't surprised when the man doesn't wake up.  
  
It's not Alphinaud's first kiss, and maybe that's the problem, that he didn't save it for when he'd really need it. Krile and Alisaie like to tease him, perhaps because he is easily teased, but the truth is that Alphinaud was far more successful with girls during his time in the Studium than the Scions probably believe. He barely remembers the first girl that he kissed, except that there was one, and his kiss was feather-light, the barest brush of lips. It was perfect, and it was perfect because, up until the spectacular betrayal of the Crystal Braves, Alphinaud had never failed at anything that truly mattered to him.  
  
At the same time, he'd never gotten much farther than fooling,  _fumbling_. For the most part, Sharlayan girls were too smart to give their virtues to every boy who asked, and Alphinaud was too smart to take them even when they were offered. The attentions of an heir to the Leveilleur fortune gave some women  _ideas_. One girl allowed him to explore her body with his hands, but he had been too nervous to take off his gloves, and he no longer remembers what she felt like. Another girl, a pretty Miqo'te lass who might have actually been a distant relation of Y'shtola and Y'mhitra's, was daring enough to pose nude for his artistic elucidation; Alphinaud remembers her well: snow-white hair and breasts of dun.  
  
Estinien has snow-white hair, too, and that is where the comparisons stop.  
  
And it isn't fair. It isn't  _fair_  that Alphinaud has worked so much, tried so hard, prayed this hard for something to go right, only for the very last step to go wrong, for the Twelve to deny him this. It isn't fair that the physicality of it is so cruel, that with the armor finally stripped, only thin sheets and a single shirt separates him from Estinien now, but there are a thousand thousand malms of unconscious mind between them, and nothing Alphinaud does now can cross that distance. It isn't fair that there is nothing he can  _do_ , that he can only sit, helpless, neither boy nor man, the maker of kings and undoer of conquerers, still this helpless, this chafed. And all he wants is for Estinien to wake up and tell him that he's  _done well, boy, you've done well_  —  
  
And Alphinaud wonders, he wonders  _really_ , what it will take for Estinien to wake. If perhaps Estinien will wake if Alphinaud climbs into the bed with him. If another kiss will make a difference. If a deeper kiss will stir him. Estinien's lips are thin against his own; the dragoon's tongue is warm but limp. He tastes of nothing. His eyes stay closed. So Alphinaud's hands wander the man's body, cup the curve of muscle at his chest, so like a girl's soft breast, and yet not at all. His tongue wanders deeper, he tips his head to one side, and for a moment he thinks that Estinien  _does_ move, that his tongue slipped ever so slightly against Alphinaud's lip. So he pulls the dragoon's shirt-buttons open, the topmost button, the one after that, because he has to wake, he  _has_ to —  
  
A sound from behind him startles him still. The infirmary door creaks open. On instinct, Alphinaud turns.  
  
Abel Whitecape is there.  
  
Alphinaud pulls away. He flinches backwards into his seat. Nervously, he wipes his palms against his thighs. "I-I can explain," are the first words out of his mouth, and he immediately regrets them because they all but confirm his guilt.  
  
All is quiet in the infirmary, and Estinien goes on breathing.  
  
For a moment, the hospitalier captain says nothing. He closes the door behind him, then walks toward the window. The bags beneath his tired eyes have never seemed so prominent. Slowly, the Hyuran man pulls the curtains open. Then he turns, and stands with his back against the dawn.  
  
"What is there to explain, Master Alphinaud?" Captain Whitecape asks, past the brilliant sun. "I saw nothing."


	2. Author's Notes

I am twenty-two years old now, but I remember very well what I was like when I was sixteen. I attended an excessively prestigious high school. It was the kind that reeked of privilege, although I didn't really understand that then; it was the sort of school where my peers attended dinners with the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. If I had been a little more worldly at the time, and ingratiated myself to the wealthy white kids, I'd probably be working on a second novel with a major publisher right about now instead of hashing out the author's notes to this piece. But it's hard to be a fully-formed individual at sixteen, and at sixteen, the last thing on my mind was what I was going to do with my life.  
  
We were all good kids at this school. That's probably hard to believe, but it's the truth. There was no fighting, no bullying. We earned perfect grades; we were the obedient scions of our families; we were all brilliant in one way or another. Students who were not skilled in the language arts made genuine advancements in the sciences. Students who could not grasp trigonometry were musicians nonpareil. Then there were students who were perfect in every way, and I have no doubt that, privately, they were dying inside.  
  
Some of us were innocent, but most of us weren't, and most of us didn't want to be. Somehow, I was the sort of person that other people trusted with their secrets — which I suppose is because I was something of an extremely charming sociopath (see the author's notes to Midsummer, if you're curious) — and I knew a lot of things I shouldn't have known. One girl burst into tears when she confided to me that she had caught her boyfriend having sex with another boy at a party, and that she'd been insecure about her own attractiveness ever since. Another girl from the debate team complained to me that all sleepaway debate tournaments were an excuse for the debaters to get laid; she told me about the young, charismatic college boy who'd gotten her into bed before she thought twice about it and left his suite. A hyperintelligent friend of mine who was on the spectrum arranged a meeting with a male university student for a hookup as soon as he reached the legal age of consent; he told me it was excellent, that they were both inexperienced, but they still had a good time, and by the way, he topped. A couple with whom I often discussed Chinese military strategy and the state of local politics were secretly engaged in BDSM — the male half of the couple wore shibari ropes beneath the soft wool cardigans his mother knit for him. A different girl who was probably a genuine sadist organized a "game" of sorts in which she pit several boys against each other for the privilege of being able to fuck her in one of the art rooms.  
  
A few of us were infringed upon by much older adults in one way or another, some more seriously than others. My chainsmoking health teacher was rude to everyone in her class, but she'd try to get uncomfortably intimate with this handsome but haughty boy from the soccer team (joke's on her, because he had a thing for  _me_ ). A remarkably pretty male friend of mine once told me that a middle-school teacher of his once asked him to help out after school, but wound up photographing his bare feet — no doubt a fetish activity, but there wasn't any touching involved, so my friend said he didn't care. There were probably other stories, worse stories, but I didn't hear all of them. In a big high school, one person's reach only extends so far.  
  
Like I said.  
  
We were all good kids.  
  
We were all good kids, but few of us were good people, and even fewer actually wanted to contribute to society. I've no doubt that things have changed since then — many of my former high school friends have gotten involved with politics, with law, with science — but at the time, precious few of us understood ourselves well enough to want to help others. We were young and attractive and rich, drunk on power and prestige, and unlike Alphinaud, we didn't try to change the world.  
  
At sixteen, I was a monster running wild with other monsters, and if I could have murdered someone with impunity, I would have probably done it, for no reason that I can justify now.  
  
We were all good kids and all of this was real, and nothing is accomplished by pretending that any of us were wholly evil or wholly pure. I have no doubt that my life experiences have been very different from that of most people, that some might even be disgusted and angered by what I am saying here, but all of this was real. Alphinaud kissing Estinien in the privacy of an infirmary room was real. I don't mean that it happened to me, or even that it happened at all. I mean that it resonates with my understanding of the world — that it is terrible and glorious in the way that the people I knew were terrible and glorious. That it is consistent with the reality of how sixteen-year-olds fumble their way towards maturity. Because maturity is not attained without mistakes, and even forty-year-olds can be immature. Because a man of thirty-three who has been isolated from sin is exactly the same as a child only twelve years old, and I am not the boy I was when I was sixteen and ready to kill.  
  
If you read Briar Rose and you thought it was horrifying, I understand. If you read Briar Rose and you thought it was beautiful, I understand that too. I wrote this story because I am full of stories, and I have held these stories for many years, and if I do not tell them, I am certain I will burn from the inside out.  
  
This was real. I wanted to share it. I have nothing more or less to say than that.


End file.
